Chuck Fager
Encyclopedia
Charles Eugene Fager known as Chuck Fager, is an American activist, an author, an editor, a publisher and an outspoken and prominent member of the Religious Society of Friends
. He is known for his work in both the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and in the Peace movement
. His written works include religious and political essays, humor, adult fiction, and juvenile fiction, and he is best known for Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South, his in-depth history of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement.
Since 2002 Fager has served as Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina
, a peace project next door to Fort Bragg, a major US Army base.
to a Roman Catholic
family. He is the oldest of eleven children. He grew up on various United States Air Force
bases.
Fager enrolled at Colorado State University
in 1960. There he was in the Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps
at Colorado State University
, where he won a medal as the Outstanding Freshman Cadet, and later commanded a prize-winning AFROTC drill team. However, by his senior year his interest in the air force had waned, and he voluntarily left the ROTC. After leaving Colorado in late 1964, he completed a B. A. in Humanities
from Colorado State University in 1967.
He attended Harvard Divinity School
, mostly part-time, for four years, starting in 1968.
in late summer 1964, and soon became active in the Civil Rights movement. In December 1964 he joined the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
, first in Atlanta and then in Selma, Alabama
. He was part of the 1965 voting rights campaign there organized and directed by James Bevel
. During that time Fager was arrested three times and spent one night in a jail cell with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Fager left Selma in early 1966. He had obtained status as a conscientious objector
to the military draft, and was required to perform two years of alternative service. This service was performed first at Friends World Institute later Friends World College based in Long Island, New York, and then completed at the New York City Department of Social Services (the Welfare Department).
He later participated in several peaceful protests against the Vietnam War
. During that time he was arrested twice.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Fager's work at Friends World Institute acquainted him with some Quakers who were involved in it. He worked as a junior instructor at that college in 1966-1967. In 1969 he joined the Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he was studying at Harvard Divinity School
. Since then he has been a member of various Friends Meetings.
Publications and Professional Pilgrimage
In high school during the mid-1950s, Fager got in trouble for writing a circulating a clandestine collection of satiric articles poking fun at teachers and school administrators. He has been writing ever since. He began work as a journalist in college, and in 1967, published his first book,White Reflections On Black Power, followed in 1969 by Uncertain Resurrection: The Poor Peoples Washington Campaign.He later resumed reporting in the Boston-Cambridge area while still enrolled at Harvard Divinity School. By late 1970, he was free-lancing fulltime, and struggling with the associated impecuniousness. Despite the poverty, the pull of writing was irresistible, and he left academia behind.
From Massachusetts Fager moved in 1975 to San Francisco, where he became a fulltime freelance feature reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian
. One subject of his reporting there was former Congressman Paul Pete McCloskey
. By 1978, after Fager had moved to the Washington DC area, McCloskey hired him as a staff investigator for the U.S. House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. He stayed in this position until early 1981, when McCloskey ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. Despite his high regard for McCloskey, Fager disliked Capitol Hill as a place to work, and was happy to leave it behind, even for the renewed uncertainties of the freelance writer's path.
In 1985 Fager began work for the US Postal Service, first as a substitute Rural Mail Carrier, and then as a Mailhandler, until mid-1994. The good pay and benefits of the jobs were good for him and his family (four children). During these years of blue collar manual labor, however, Fager continued to be productive as a writer. (He drew on this experience for his second mystery novel, Un-Friendly Persuasion).
In 1979 Fager founded his own Kimo Press, which publishes Quaker literature, most of which was written by Fager himself. Beginning in 1981, He also edited an independent, muckraking and gadfly Quaker newsletter called A Friendly Letter, which continued until early 1993. He founded a journal entitled Quaker Theology in 1999.
After leaving the Postal Service in 1994, Fager was hired to create an Issues Program at Pendle Hill
, a Quaker study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. From there, in 1997, he moved to Bellefonte, PA, where he returned to freelance writing, and taught courses in Business Writing at Penn state University. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, he agreed to take the position of Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville NC,Quaker House a job he had initially rejected earlier in the year.
In his writing, Fager has pursued several abiding interests: reporting, especially about current social issues such as the civil rights movement, recent wars, militarism, and torture; religion, with special focus on Quakerism, or the Society of Friends; and stories, particularly for younger readers.
Organizations
From 1996 to 2002 Fager also held the position of Clerk in the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. He also was Clerk for the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable. Since early 2005 he has been part of the Quaker Initiative to End Torture. QUIT
For a further list, search the Tripod catalog: TRIPOD: Library Catalog of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
. He is known for his work in both the 1960s Civil Rights Movement and in the Peace movement
Peace movement
A peace movement is a social movement that seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war , minimize inter-human violence in a particular place or type of situation, often linked to the goal of achieving world peace...
. His written works include religious and political essays, humor, adult fiction, and juvenile fiction, and he is best known for Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South, his in-depth history of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement.
Since 2002 Fager has served as Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville, North Carolina
Fayetteville, North Carolina
Fayetteville is a city located in Cumberland County, North Carolina, United States. It is the county seat of Cumberland County, and is best known as the home of Fort Bragg, a U.S. Army post located northwest of the city....
, a peace project next door to Fort Bragg, a major US Army base.
Early life
Charles E. Fager was born in KansasKansas
Kansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
to a Roman Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
family. He is the oldest of eleven children. He grew up on various United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
bases.
Education
In high school, Fager left Catholicism, and for some years regarded himself as an atheist. However, he was interested in religion, and was much influenced by the work of C.G. Jung, who took religion seriously, if in an un-orthodox way.Fager enrolled at Colorado State University
Colorado State University
Colorado State University is a public research university located in Fort Collins, Colorado. The university is the state's land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.The enrollment is approximately 29,932 students, including resident and...
in 1960. There he was in the Air Force Reserve Officers' Training Corps
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
The Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a college-based, officer commissioning program, predominantly in the United States. It is designed as a college elective that focuses on leadership development, problem solving, strategic planning, and professional ethics.The U.S...
at Colorado State University
Colorado State University
Colorado State University is a public research university located in Fort Collins, Colorado. The university is the state's land grant university, and the flagship university of the Colorado State University System.The enrollment is approximately 29,932 students, including resident and...
, where he won a medal as the Outstanding Freshman Cadet, and later commanded a prize-winning AFROTC drill team. However, by his senior year his interest in the air force had waned, and he voluntarily left the ROTC. After leaving Colorado in late 1964, he completed a B. A. in Humanities
Humanities
The humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences....
from Colorado State University in 1967.
He attended Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
, mostly part-time, for four years, starting in 1968.
Activism
Fager moved to Atlanta, GeorgiaAtlanta, Georgia
Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...
in late summer 1964, and soon became active in the Civil Rights movement. In December 1964 he joined the staff of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
, first in Atlanta and then in Selma, Alabama
Selma, Alabama
Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, Alabama, United States, located on the banks of the Alabama River. The population was 20,512 at the 2000 census....
. He was part of the 1965 voting rights campaign there organized and directed by James Bevel
James Bevel
James L. Bevel was an American minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement who, as the Director of Direct Action and Director of Nonviolent Education of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference initiated, strategized, directed, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era:...
. During that time Fager was arrested three times and spent one night in a jail cell with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the...
Fager left Selma in early 1966. He had obtained status as a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
to the military draft, and was required to perform two years of alternative service. This service was performed first at Friends World Institute later Friends World College based in Long Island, New York, and then completed at the New York City Department of Social Services (the Welfare Department).
He later participated in several peaceful protests against the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. During that time he was arrested twice.
In 1968, he signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.
Involvement with the Society of Friends
MembershipFager's work at Friends World Institute acquainted him with some Quakers who were involved in it. He worked as a junior instructor at that college in 1966-1967. In 1969 he joined the Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he was studying at Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Divinity School is one of the constituent schools of Harvard University, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States. The School's mission is to train and educate its students either in the academic study of religion, or for the practice of a religious ministry or other public...
. Since then he has been a member of various Friends Meetings.
Publications and Professional Pilgrimage
In high school during the mid-1950s, Fager got in trouble for writing a circulating a clandestine collection of satiric articles poking fun at teachers and school administrators. He has been writing ever since. He began work as a journalist in college, and in 1967, published his first book,White Reflections On Black Power, followed in 1969 by Uncertain Resurrection: The Poor Peoples Washington Campaign.He later resumed reporting in the Boston-Cambridge area while still enrolled at Harvard Divinity School. By late 1970, he was free-lancing fulltime, and struggling with the associated impecuniousness. Despite the poverty, the pull of writing was irresistible, and he left academia behind.
From Massachusetts Fager moved in 1975 to San Francisco, where he became a fulltime freelance feature reporter for the San Francisco Bay Guardian
San Francisco Bay Guardian
The San Francisco Bay Guardian is a free alternative newspaper published weekly in San Francisco, California. The paper is owned mostly by its publisher, Bruce B...
. One subject of his reporting there was former Congressman Paul Pete McCloskey
Pete McCloskey
Paul Norton "Pete" McCloskey Jr. is a former Republican politician from the U.S. state of California who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1967 to 1983. He ran on an anti-war platform for the Republican nomination for President in 1972 but was defeated by incumbent President...
. By 1978, after Fager had moved to the Washington DC area, McCloskey hired him as a staff investigator for the U.S. House Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee. He stayed in this position until early 1981, when McCloskey ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. Despite his high regard for McCloskey, Fager disliked Capitol Hill as a place to work, and was happy to leave it behind, even for the renewed uncertainties of the freelance writer's path.
In 1985 Fager began work for the US Postal Service, first as a substitute Rural Mail Carrier, and then as a Mailhandler, until mid-1994. The good pay and benefits of the jobs were good for him and his family (four children). During these years of blue collar manual labor, however, Fager continued to be productive as a writer. (He drew on this experience for his second mystery novel, Un-Friendly Persuasion).
In 1979 Fager founded his own Kimo Press, which publishes Quaker literature, most of which was written by Fager himself. Beginning in 1981, He also edited an independent, muckraking and gadfly Quaker newsletter called A Friendly Letter, which continued until early 1993. He founded a journal entitled Quaker Theology in 1999.
After leaving the Postal Service in 1994, Fager was hired to create an Issues Program at Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill
Pendle Hill is located in the north-east of Lancashire, England, near the towns of Burnley, Nelson, Colne, Clitheroe and Padiham, an area known as Pendleside. Its summit is above mean sea level. It gives its name to the Borough of Pendle. It is an isolated hill, separated from the Pennines to the...
, a Quaker study center in Wallingford, Pennsylvania. From there, in 1997, he moved to Bellefonte, PA, where he returned to freelance writing, and taught courses in Business Writing at Penn state University. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, he agreed to take the position of Director of Quaker House in Fayetteville NC,Quaker House a job he had initially rejected earlier in the year.
In his writing, Fager has pursued several abiding interests: reporting, especially about current social issues such as the civil rights movement, recent wars, militarism, and torture; religion, with special focus on Quakerism, or the Society of Friends; and stories, particularly for younger readers.
Organizations
From 1996 to 2002 Fager also held the position of Clerk in the Fellowship of Quakers in the Arts. He also was Clerk for the 2001 Quaker Peace Roundtable. Since early 2005 he has been part of the Quaker Initiative to End Torture. QUIT
Personal life
Fager has been married and divorced twice. He has four grown children, and a growing number of grandchildren.Selected works
- White Reflections on Black Power, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1967.
- Uncertain Resurrection: The Poor Peoples Washington Campaign, Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1969.
- Selma 1965: The March That Changed the South, Charles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's SonsCharles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing a number of American authors including Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen King, Robert A. Heinlein, Thomas Wolfe, George Santayana, John Clellon...
, 1974; Beacon PressBeacon PressBeacon Press is an American non-profit book publisher. Founded in 1854 by the American Unitarian Association, it is currently a department of the Unitarian Universalist Association.Beacon Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses....
, 1985; Kimo Press, 2005. - The Magic Quilts: A Fantasy, Kimo Press, 1981 and 1989.
- A Respondent Spark: the Basics of Bible Study, Kimo Press, 1984 and 1994.
- A Man Who Made a Difference: the Life of David H. Scull, Langley Hill Friends Meeting, 1985.
- Quakers Are Funny, Kimo Press, 1987.
- Editor, Quaker Service at the Crossroads, Kimo Press, 1988.
- Life and Death and Two Chickens: Stories for Children, Stories of Childhood, Kimo Press, 1989.
- Wisdom and Your Spiritual Journey: A Study of Wisdom in the Biblical and Quaker Traditions, Kimo Press, 1990.
- Fire in the Valley, Quaker Ghost Stories, Kimo Press, 1991.
- Murder Among Friends, A Quaker Mystery, Kimo Press, 1993.
- Un-Friendly Persuasion, A Quaker Mystery, Kimo Press, 1995.
- Without Apology: the Heroes, the Heritage and the Hope of Liberal Quakerism, Kimo Press, 1996.
- A Quaker Declaration of War, Kimo Press, 2003.
- The Harlot's Bible: Quaker Essays, Kimo press 2003.
- Shaggy Locks & Birkenstocks: Studies in Liberal Quaker History, Kimo Press, 2003.
- Why God Is Like A Wet Bar of Soap: Quaker Stories, Kimo Press 2004.
- Eating Dr. King's Dinner: A Memoir of the Movement, Kimo Press, 2005.
For a further list, search the Tripod catalog: TRIPOD: Library Catalog of Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges
External links
- Chuck Fager's Bio at QuakerHouse.org
- Books for Quakers & Younger Readers by Chuck Fager from Kimo Press
- Chuck Fager's Blog
- Free The Captives: Now a memorial to Tom Fox, a Quaker who was taken captive with three other Christian peaceworkers in Iraq in 2005, then was murdered in march of 2006.